It has been well established that the hex maps are the main basis of our knowledge of Mystaran geography, and it's generally agreed that in most cases they trump other sources, such as regional and world maps. However, the job of lining up all the existing hex maps is much harder than it may at first appear to be. Over the years, many people have asked why I haven't produced this map or that one, and this is generally the answer to this question. The most problematic areas in this regard are thus the most asked-after maps: Norwold, the Great Waste, the Trident Bay area, Davania, and Skothar.

In this thread, I'm going to methodically work through the task of lining up all the maps, presenting the evidence bit by bit, and asking for input where necessary. I'm determined to work through all these problems and find the best solutions for each one at some point in the near future. This may well involve adopting solutions other cartographers have discovered, but it's important to work through the evidence before coming to any conclusions.

One little caveat: Please try to restrict discussions to the point under current discussion (or a previously discussed point). It's important to take things one step at a time and build up all the foundations before we start tackling the points of difficulty. I will present each topic with a new set of images, signalling the new points up for discussion. I will leave time for discussion of each area or issue to come to a head before advancing to a new topic. Naturally, feel free to post in a new thread over in the main Mystara board if you think of a topic that we haven't covered here yet.

Unless otherwise noted, all the images I post and link to in this thread are accurate replicas of the original maps, or excerpts of such replicas.

With that, I'd like to start things off by looking at the 72 mile per hex maps.

72 mile per hex maps

There were only four official maps at this scale, beginning in 1989 with the seminal Dawn of the Emperors poster map, which defined the whole area between Brun and Skothar. The importance of this scale is twofold: it shows areas that are not covered on any larger scale maps; and it sets out their relative locations. Detail-wise, unless it's the only scale available, in most cases it is too general to be of much use.

The last three maps came in the Poor Wizard's Almanacs, I in 1992, II in 1993 and III in 1994. All show the post-Wrath of the Immortals world, with just remnants of Alphatia. All three maps also overlap with the original Dawn of the Emperors maps and each other.

Here are the maps:

Before we move on into the larger scales (24 and 8 miles per hex), let's examine these maps, compare them, and see what we can find. We're looking for any and all kinds of observations, inconsistencies, problems, etc.

Here's another map to help things along, showing just the coastlines. The colours I've used don't make it all that obvious which map is which, but for the sake of comparison they should be okay.

Generally speaking, the coastlines from all four maps have a very high degree of similarity. You will likely have to download the file at the original resolution and zoom in to find the problems. I've found three main areas so far.

The first is Davania. Dawn of the Emperors and Poor Wizard's Almanac II present starkly different coastlines for the southern continent. The Almanac map moves the Thyatian Hinterlands to the east, retaining the same general geography but displacing it. Obviously the Almanac shows a lot more of the area, but which source is more correct will take some more comparisons with other scales of hex maps, and the world maps.

The second is Norwold. It's not a major issue, but the size of the Isle of Dogs was significantly increased in the Almanac map.

The third is Minaea. Part of the coastline is missed out entirely on the first Almanac map, and there are some terrain differences when comparing the hex maps, too. But Dawn of the Emperors and the third Almanac map fit together very well.

Edit: I found another minor one - the third Almanac misses out the southern edge of Qeodhar and Whaler's Island.

Point 1:
I think it comes down to which world map you want to use as your base.
Master Set (Flat) - The highest point of Davania is straight down from Ierendi. DotE Map would be based on that.
Hollow World Set (Curvature) -The highest point of Davania is straight down from Minrothad. PWA2 Map appears to have used this as their reference.

Point 2:
Could you use the Norwold 24mph map and scale it to see which of the 72mph map fits better?

Morfie wrote:Point 1:
I think it comes down to which world map you want to use as your base.
Master Set (Flat) - The highest point of Davania is straight down from Ierendi. DotE Map would be based on that.
Hollow World Set (Curvature) -The highest point of Davania is straight down from Minrothad. PWA2 Map appears to have used this as their reference.

Yes, you're right. It's not possible to resolve this issue with just the 72 mile per hex maps. There is one other source for Davania in the Champions of Mystara Serpent Peninsula map. Along with the two world maps, these are the only official sources for Davania and its positioning with regard to the Known World. (There are also some derivatives of the Master Set map in CM1/M5/etc's Brun, and in the Princess Ark series' early maps.)

There's not a huge difference between the two world maps when you match their projections, but let's leave that to a later topic for now.

Point 2:
Could you use the Norwold 24mph map and scale it to see which of the 72mph map fits better?

Yes, absolutely - there are a few other maps that include this area. Interestingly enough, it would seem that the earlier Dawn of the Emperors size for the Isle of Dogs is the more common one, despite the Almanac being the more recent source.

Gecko wrote:These seem to be mostly at the edges of maps, are we sure they are not projection issues? Ie look at how Greenland or Antartica seems to appear vastly different on differently projected RW maps.

The hex maps are all based on equirectangular projections, so it shouldn't be an issue. (It might be more accurate to say that the original cartographers probably didn't worry about projections at all.)

But you're right about most of the problems being on the edges of the maps. This is a common theme, because the edges often show undeveloped areas, and of course they change when they are later developed.

Thorf I saw this when I was compiling my 24 mile hex map from the 72 mile hexes for parts of eastern Brun, Alphatia and NW Davania. It's been a while but I think I just went 24 mile hexes where I had them to override any 72 mile inconsistencies.

I'm curious to see what conclusions you come to as I remember almost pulling my hair out a few times over this.

In my mind it looks like the largest inconsistency lies with the northern coast of Davania. Are there any other sources (hex map or otherwise) that we can pull coastlines from? I'm thinking mostly of the X adventure line, but there might be others as well.

I've been working on the Master Set map, comparing it with the 72 mile per hex maps. Here are three different ways of matching them up:

Comparison of coastlines from 72 mile per hex maps with overlaid Master Set world map coastlines in black. The fit is centred on the Isle of Dawn. The general coastlines are remarkably similar, but the fit between the maps is not very good.

Comparison of coastlines from 72 mile per hex maps with overlaid Master Set world map coastlines in red. The fit is centred on the Isle of Dawn, with the same scaling as the first version, but with individual landmasses shifted to better fit the 72 mile per hex maps. Such nudging of the landmasses is likely to be necessary to bring everything into line with the hex maps - and indeed to make the hex maps match up with each other. (More of this when we start to delve into the larger scale hex maps.)

Comparison of coastlines from 72 mile per hex maps with overlaid Master Set world map coastlines in yellow. The fit is centred on the Isle of Dawn, again with the same scaling, then the whole Master Set map rotated to better fit the 72 mile per hex map. This results in a better fit especially for Skothar and Bellissaria, as well as the Serpent Peninsula; less so for Norwold, and of course spinning the whole map has other repercussions, too.

Unfortunately, all of these are somewhat arbitrary; there is no 100% accurate way to match up these maps. In the end it will have to be done by sight. Obviously this means that there is a lot of room for tweaking - none of these comparisons are likely to be the final answer just yet.

Just out of curiosity... what if you treated the coastal outlines of each continent separately? Shifting and rotating them individually to match up with the 72MPH maps. I realize you did part of this in your 2nd and 3rd examples, but wasn't sure if you treated the continental rotations separately or linked as a whole.

Gecko wrote:These seem to be mostly at the edges of maps, are we sure they are not projection issues? Ie look at how Greenland or Antartica seems to appear vastly different on differently projected RW maps.

The hex maps are all based on equirectangular projections, so it shouldn't be an issue.

It appears so but is that confirmed/cannonical somewhere? Or just assumed or derived?

(It might be more accurate to say that the original cartographers probably didn't worry about projections at all.)

most likely.

Your comparison maps won't load (it says it's a temporary problem so I wouldn't worry), so I can't comment on them at the moment.

Chimpman wrote:Just out of curiosity... what if you treated the coastal outlines of each continent separately? Shifting and rotating them individually to match up with the 72MPH maps. I realize you did part of this in your 2nd and 3rd examples, but wasn't sure if you treated the continental rotations separately or linked as a whole.

yeah, if the issues can be (mostly) fixed by adding (or removing) small inacuracies to shift things around- then placing such inacuracies in the oceans makes far more sense than trying to do it on land.

Chimpman wrote:Just out of curiosity... what if you treated the coastal outlines of each continent separately? Shifting and rotating them individually to match up with the 72MPH maps. I realize you did part of this in your 2nd and 3rd examples, but wasn't sure if you treated the continental rotations separately or linked as a whole.

You're right, I didn't rotate each continent separately. It would definitely be the easiest way to get everything lining up, but it would also change the overall look of the world. I would rather we avoided doing that. It would arguably be better to get the best fit possible from scaling, and then adapt the overlapping areas to match the hex maps, which would retain the overall look of the world maps while adopting the "more accurate" versions from the hex maps.

To be honest, at this stage I'm not even sure that shifting continents around is a good thing to do. It all comes down to how much we're willing to interpret the maps versus how much we're willing to adapt them. Another possible way of reconciling them would be to scale them so that the edges of the hex mapped area fit as well as possible into the appropriate section, then simply replacing the inner area while making the joins with the outer area as natural as possible.

Thorf wrote:The hex maps are all based on equirectangular projections, so it shouldn't be an issue.

It appears so but is that confirmed/cannonical somewhere? Or just assumed or derived?

It's canonical in so far as the Hollow World Set world map was presented in a different projection, which when reprojected into an equirectangular projection (and error-corrected) closely resembles the Master Set map. So in that way it's derived. The official sources never mention projections at all, so there is no explicit confirmation.

Your comparison maps won't load (it says it's a temporary problem so I wouldn't worry), so I can't comment on them at the moment.

I think my site's monthly bandwidth was exceeded - the first time that's happened in quite a while. I only noticed because my host seems to have increased the limit again. So it's definitely up now.

I've been wanting to continue this discussion for a while, but keep getting stuck.

Discussion of the 72 mile per hex maps seems to have come to a conclusion. To sum up, the maps generally fit together very well, with just a couple of problem areas; of those, only Davania is a really major issue, and we have concluded that we need more sources to solve the problem. In keeping with the rules of the thread - to only discuss things that have been explicitly put on the table as evidence - we'll leave it for now, and come back to deal with it later when we have brought in the necessary sources.

We also touched on the issue of the world map and lining it up with 72 mile per hex maps. The general consensus is that some changes will need to be made to the world map to fit the hex-mapped area into it, although we have yet to agree on how to make the necessary changes. We'll come back to this too at a later date, because really it's the last part of the puzzle once all the problems with the hex maps have been resolved.

For future reference:

Extant Issues & Things To Do

Davania - 72 mile per hex sources conflict on the northern coast.

Outer World - Master Set world map and 72 mile per hex maps do not line up without significant tweaking.

72 mile per hex master map - since sources are generally consistent, create an amalgamated source map which distills the four source maps into a single uniform map.

Moving on, next I'd like to take a look at the sources for the heart of the Mystara setting, the Known World. For now, let's limit our discussions to the 24 mile per hex maps; more detailed maps will be introduced later.

There were a total of seven versions of the Known World map, beginning in 1981 with the original map in X1, and finishing with the regional map from 1994's Kingdom of Karameikos boxed set. I have remade the first six of these, so for now the 1994 map is not here for reference.

Note that both X1 maps, the Expert Set map, and the Cyclopedia map were all originally in black and white; I present them here in colourised versions, but I also have black and white versions of most of them at the Atlas wiki.

Also note that we are primarily concentrating on the AC 1000 setting; as such, the Wrath of the Immortals map here is my AC 1004 restored-Alfheim version rather than the published AC 1010 map. Again, the AC1010 version is on the Atlas wiki if you need to refer to it. (Alfheim and the Great Crater are the only major differences between the maps.)

Again, I'd like to begin by comparing the coastlines.

In general they are remarkably similar, although there are some minor localised problems. The big exception to this is Wrath of the Immortals, which takes a large strip of land off the coast of Ylaruam and the Northern Reaches.

Areas of interest include Ostland and the Vestland/Soderfjord fjords, parts of which were obscured on the original maps and thus exist in multiple versions. The fjords and their connecting rivers in particular deserve a close look, because I'm going to propose a fix later on when we get to the 8 mile per hex Northern Reaches map. All of these problems will be more obvious if you take a look at the black and white versions of the maps.

With the exceptions of the Heldann/Norwold coast and the Thanegioth Archipelago, all of these areas have of course been mapped at 8 miles per hex, so the solution to pretty much any problems with these maps will obviously be to use the more detailed map as the primary source. So for now let's focus on finding interesting issues within these maps.

Later on I will post a comparison with 72 mile per hex coastlines also shown.

Robin wrote:And this way you could (or couldn't..i'm not sure) ease down many of the coastline differences.
Maybe I'm wrong (probably am--yet still I'm curious).
Let me know whatyou think of this idea.

Robin - thanks for contributing to the discussion. Your idea has been proposed before as a way to keep the land masses as close as possible to their familiar shapes and sizes. Some people definitely favour this solution, because as you said the sea can be used to compensate for some of the distortion.

However, I'm not very fond of this solution myself. The reason is that in the extreme north and south of the maps there is really not all that much ground in the first place, and I feel that rather than trying to avert the distortion we should instead accept it, and revise our ideas of the world accordingly. The problem is that hex maps make it look like any two hexes are the same shape and size, but in fact this couldn't be further from the truth. If we correct the inappropriate use of hex maps for large areas and instead try to focus on smaller areas the distortions will no longer be an issue.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people who would love nothing more than to see the whole world mapped as a massive hex map. Such a map would be very misleading, but that doesn't stop people wanting to see it. (Myself included!)

Eventually I would love to go the super-realistic route and adopt various topographical and political styles of maps for small scale maps, reserving hex maps only for the larger scales (8 and 24 miles per hex), and losing the ability to join up any two hex adjacent hex maps in favour of increased accuracy. But this may just be a step too far for many people.

Getting back to the topic at hand, here are my observations about the 24 mile per hex Known World maps.

Atruaghin Plateau
The plateau appears in unbroken form for the first time in X10's map. It was repeated in Wrath of the Immortals in a similar shape and size, although with a slightly offset location. The Champions of Mystara Great Waste map version of the plateau is almost identical to the Wrath version. This is an important issue which bears strongly on the next topic...

Let's bring in some more 24 mile per hex maps to discuss the next issue.

Sind and the Known World/Great Waste border

This is a very problematic area. It would seem that there were multiple ways to link up the Known World maps with the adjacent Great Waste area. Repeating terrain patterns and the fact that the Atruaghin Plateau was split across the maps meant that there was no single clear link-up. To make things worse, official maps of the area appear to have adopted different positions on the subject, so that there are two versions of Sind: X4/X10 Sind from the first mapping era, and Wrath of the Immortals/Champions of Mystara Sind from the second era of mapping. The change between these two involved the whole of Sind being moved one hex southwest, including Sayr Ulan, Pramayama, the Asanda River, and the Salt Swamp. This change becomes evident if you line up the X4 and Champions maps using the Black Mountains on the left side of each map. They match up pretty precisely, but leave Sind one hex out of sync.

In any case, the official position is clear; Champions is the newer, more authoritative source, and it presents more of the area in question, providing unambiguous joins with the Known World and Serpent Peninsula. For whatever reason, it seems we're stuck with this inconsistency between the old and new maps.

Going back to the Known World maps...

Borders and Terrain
There are numerous differences in borders and terrain, but since most of these areas have 8 mile per hex maps which supersede these maps anyway, let's confine our discussion to areas without 8 mile per hex maps.

The Thanegioth Archipelago is another area which stays relatively unchanged between its appearances in X1 (1981), X1 (1983) and the Cyclopedia (1990). The coastlines of the islands are not identical, but close enough to not matter too much. The Isle of Dread itself has a better source in the large scale map from X1, of which more much later.

The Adri Varma Plateau is comparatively consistent between all the maps. The main sources for its precise location and terrain are the later Wrath and Champions maps. The promontory east of Lake Hast appeared for the first time in Wrath, and was adopted thereafter. Terrain-wise, too, the sources are mostly consistent, with just a couple of hexes different. The only major inconsistency is with X11's version, which displaces the eastern ridge a whole hex to the east.

This brings us to the next topic, which will require another map...

Wendar, Denagoth and Heldann

These areas are depicted mostly only at 24 miles per hex. Only the southern reaches of Wendar and Heldann appear at the 8 mile per hex scale, and for the most part they are not much detailed at that scale. (The exception being a small part of the southeastern coast of Heldann, which appeared fully developed on TM2.) The good news is that the terrain is mostly highly compatible; forested hills, heavy forests, badlands and other terrain types not yet in use at the time X11's map was made are introduced in the Wrath of the Immortals map, but in such a way as to enhance X11's map rather than conflict with it.

The main problematic areas are the borders: X11 gives all the borders to Denagoth, while Wrath assigns a full line of mountain hexes to Wendar in the west and Heldann in the east, significantly shrinking Denagoth's hold of the Mengul Mountains. The Poor Wizard's Almanac non-hex maps appear to go with X11's version. Of course, such mountain borders are likely polite fictions, so it's not a big issue, but still a decision must be made which version is correct in order to produce a new 8 mile per hex map of the area. Thus far, I have gone with the original X11 borders, which means both Wendar and Heldann are almost mountainless. Any thoughts on this issue?

Let's leave discussion of the link-up with Norwold for the moment, as it most definitely deserves our full attention as a topic of its own.

The Isle of Dawn, Alphatia, the Alatian Islands, Ochalea and the Pearl Islands

As we will soon see when I introduce the 8 mile per hex maps of the area, the edge of the Isle of Dawn should be present on most of the Known World maps just east of Ostland. TM2 provides the precise link-up. More on this topic later.

So, this issue aside, the links between the Known World and the various islands of the Alphatian Sea area are set out pretty unambiguously in Dawn of the Emperors, with the Isle of Dawn being the key reference point. All three of the other maps overlap the Isle of Dawn map significantly, making this an easy cut and paste job.

The Isle of Dawn actually should appear on the Alphatia map in the southwest corner. The version of Alphatia on the Isle of Dawn map provides the correct placement, so this is an easy fix.

That's enough to be going on with for now, I think. Please post any problems you spot (or are already aware of) in regards to all the topics introduced so far. I will hold off on introducing the next topics to give the discussion time to mature first. After that, we will move on to the trickier topics of Hule and the Savage Coast, the Serpent Peninsula (which though not tricky by itself also includes a section of Davania), and Norwold. (As always, please be patient and hold off discussion of those areas for now.)

The main problematic areas are the borders: X11 gives all the borders to Denagoth, while Wrath assigns a full line of mountain hexes to Wendar in the west and Heldann in the east, significantly shrinking Denagoth's hold of the Mengul Mountains. The Poor Wizard's Almanac non-hex maps appear to go with X11's version. Of course, such mountain borders are likely polite fictions, so it's not a big issue, but still a decision must be made which version is correct in order to produce a new 8 mile per hex map of the area. Thus far, I have gone with the original X11 borders, which means both Wendar and Heldann are almost mountainless. Any thoughts on this issue?

As you imply, borders of the area and era are not precisely defined and laid-out by treaties, especially in uninhabited (at least by any civilized societies/peoples) wilderness mounatainous areas.

Do the Heldannic Knights and Denagoth even have any political contacts?

The individual maps could implicate biases of the in-game mapmakers, or governments (ie Denagoth claims all the mounatins while Wendar & the knights claim a buffer), or simply the expansion of claims at different time frames.

Perhaps, to use a modern convention, a dashed "undefined" or "disputed" or "claimed" border style of line should be used, but even that implies more roughly agreed upon borders than what I wouold invision for the Knights vis-a-ve Denagoth (though could work for Wendar w/ respect to Denagoth).

Gecko wrote:
As you imply, borders of the area and era are not precisely defined and laid-out by treaties, especially in uninhabited (at least by any civilized societies/peoples) wilderness mounatainous areas.

Do the Heldannic Knights and Denagoth even have any political contacts?

As according The GazF of Heldann, they have near to none political contact with Denagoth. The water which runs down the mountains, and the few flyby dragons is all. In my map (8 mile hexes) both the Wendarian and Heldannic borders follow the mountains on their side. This is based on the Great Wendar and Heldann maps accompanied on Pandius.Though I think they could differ some with X11, the differences are smaal to none.

The individual maps could implicate biases of the in-game mapmakers, or governments (ie Denagoth claims all the mountains while Wendar & the knights claim a buffer), or simply the expansion of claims at different time frames.

The area is (at least I think not assigned to any real Nation. The Heldann don't use the high mountains, as on their side it does not bring them anything.the same with wendar (although this could be a matter of elven opinion--elves don't like mines. Denagoth on the otherhand has a clear and defined border by the edge of the plateau, without use from most mountainous areas not on the plateau. It would be more logical to me to call this no-mans' land.

Perhaps, to use a modern convention, a dashed "undefined" or "disputed" or "claimed" border style of line should be used, but even that implies more roughly agreed upon borders than what I wouold invision for the Knights vis-a-ve Denagoth (though could work for Wendar w/ respect to Denagoth).

The problem with disputed bordersis that they tend to imply a great area. one side clams a series ofhexes , what the others might to. thus making a whole range double claimed. andthis can literally change by the day.
In real world.. these areas are literally called no-mans land ( a 250 square meter area i know of between germany and the netherlands in the province of Drenthe) and official rules imply these areas not to be used to prevent war.
Any rich ore found on these areas would cause war and lay down the borders more clearly.
thus when, for example, on the Heldann side ores would be found, they could easily enforce their ownership on it.yet when the mines would be high in the mountains this would be difficult. Borders thus tend to follow the feet of mountains or its ridges in real world anyway.

Last edited by Robin on Sun Apr 21, 2013 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thorf wrote:Robin - thanks for contributing to the discussion. Your idea has been proposed before as a way to keep the land masses as close as possible to their familiar shapes and sizes. Some people definitely favour this solution, because as you said the sea can be used to compensate for some of the distortion.

I would prefer the use of hexes (small size on land. but I understand your idea on this.

Eventually I would love to go the super-realistic route and adopt various topographical and political styles of maps for small scale maps, reserving hex maps only for the larger scales (8 and 24 miles per hex), and losing the ability to join up any two hex adjacent hex maps in favour of increased accuracy. But this may just be a step too far for many people.

I remember old AD&D maps where you had realistic normal maps and use a plastic(see-through) hex map overlay.
Maybe this would work. At least you always use hexes. makes travelling/getting lost/overal terrain rules easier to apply, but also shows the final finessof realistic detail the world actually is.

as far as I remember I found this in a Forgotten realms Box, but I forgot which one (and can't find it--stored probably in a impossible corner or box during the relocation to my new home several months ago).

Robin wrote:
as far as I remember I found this in a Forgotten realms Box, but I forgot which one (and can't find it--stored probably in a impossible corner or box during the relocation to my new home several months ago).

Robin wrote:
as far as I remember I found this in a Forgotten realms Box, but I forgot which one (and can't find it--stored probably in a impossible corner or box during the relocation to my new home several months ago).

Robin wrote:I remember old AD&D maps where you had realistic normal maps and use a plastic(see-through) hex map overlay.
Maybe this would work. At least you always use hexes. makes travelling/getting lost/overal terrain rules easier to apply, but also shows the final finessof realistic detail the world actually is.

It's not really a matter of hexes being more or less realistic - they're just a little more symbolic, that's all really. In any case, having a map with an optional hex layer does nothing to solve the distortion problem, I'm afraid. The only way to fix the problem with distortion is to avoid showing large areas of the world in the hex format, and discard the idea of interconnecting hex maps.